The thing with Runaway Cart is that something has to bring up Javert's suspicions. Something the audience can see or hear, really, so it's shown rather than told. I've seen regionals cut the runaway cart (to avoid staging it) and instead have Valjean give a show of strength by breaking the handcuffs...

Same with me, Acaila! Not that I'm normally confident, but that I tend to be really nervous with the people I most want to fawn over. There are a lot of people around here that I hold in awe and have never met because I've chickened out rather than risk tripping all over myself. then when I finally ...

No, Éponine does not come out with the students because she isn't a revolutionary. One of the US tour Gavroches, though, put up a really big fight about how it's wrong Gav isn't in ECAET because he is a revolutionary, and they let him join the tableau for closing night. Newer productions have been p...

I'm happy we can all get on the forum again! :) Thanks for this. I'll be in town at the end of October and this is confirming that yes, I do want to spend one of my evenings at the Queen's. (I'm over for the James Plays at the National, but I booked for the marathon day in order to have extra theatr...

I kept getting (for years) "the faithful serf is at his post once more" and was reading it as Valjean applying that to himself, like he was referencing being brought before the whipping post or something again and is begging not to be let off - he's faithfully returned to his master for pu...

Review: http://ratkiley.tumblr.com/post/91013119412/the-future-present-dallas-theater-centers-les Girl's allowed to like what she likes, and I mostly pity her that she hasn't seen a good production before because everything she thinks is innovative is par for the course (but not in the crappy 25th a...

Apparently the direction is crap. ATEOTD is all factory workers, no unemployed, so no contrast. Direct quote from a friend on facebook: "Why is Cosette smiling while singing her song about being puzzled? Why does it look like SOUTH PARK making fun of RENT? Enojlaras looks like a boy bander- not...

Nobody talks about Bossuet much in meta terms, unless it's to complain that "unlucky" and "clutz" are not synonyms, but maybe we should. Hugo deliberately sets Lesgle apart in several ways from the other students: 1) He does not come from the Midi 2) We know precisely what his fa...

They also cast the "old" male leads far too young - Nehal Joshi (Valjean) is my age and looks it, particularly with the shaved head hiding the bald spot, which means if he did 19 years for anything, he started out in juvie. Ed Watts is a bit older, but not that noticeably (he's one of my f...

Something Just Broke isn't necessarily about the Kennedy assassination - depending on the staging, it can be about all the assassinations (I've seen it done both ways). It happens to be located after the Kennedy assassination, but the way that one is staged, it's a historical culmination, it's every...

It was shopped around for a while, Disney was finally willing to pull the trigger, and at some point, you either say no to the enormous entertainment behemoth that is flexing serious muscle on Broadway these days, or you say yes and divert what you can. I don't think Steve is an artist so much as a ...

(I swear, sometimes it seems I know everything, but I really have just done lots of research into utterly random topics related to the time period of this novel.) Jewish citizenship was accomplished at the time of the Revolution. There were three main Jewish populations - the Sephardim in the south,...